Speaker 1: Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of
Speaker 1: performance through strong human relations, team building, and golajving. This
Speaker 1: is the seven Minute Leadership Podcast with your host Paul
Speaker 1: fella Aledo.
Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome to the seven Minute Leadership Podcast.
Speaker 2: It's episode five eighty six years ago. That's how long
Speaker 2: it's been since the word COVID stopped being a headline
Speaker 2: and started being a lived experience. For some people, COVID
Speaker 2: is now a political talking point. For others, it's an
Speaker 2: argument at a dinner table. For some, it's something they
Speaker 2: would rather forget ever happened. For me, and for a
Speaker 2: lot of leaders, listening to this, COVID was personal. I
Speaker 2: was on the front lines. I watched patients struggle to breathe.
Speaker 2: I watched such hospitals overflow. I watched systems bend, crack,
Speaker 2: and in some cases break. I watched leaders rise, and
Speaker 2: I watched leaders disappear when things got hard and COVID
Speaker 2: killed my mother. That's not a statistic, that's not a graph,
Speaker 2: that's not a case count. That's a chair at the
Speaker 2: table that stays empty. So when people say that was
Speaker 2: years ago, why are we still talking about it? Here's why.
Speaker 2: Because leadership didn't stop being tested when the masks came off.
Speaker 2: The uncomfortable truth is this, the next crisis will not
Speaker 2: be handled the same way COVID was. It won't be
Speaker 2: led the same way. It won't be communicated the same way.
Speaker 2: Different political powers will respond differently, Different beliefs will shape decisions,
Speaker 2: Different levels of preparedness will exist or won't. That part
Speaker 2: is unavoidable. What is avoidable is pretending leadership somehow becomes
Speaker 2: optional when things get messy. People still expect leadership. Patients
Speaker 2: still expect care, Employees still expect honesty. Communities still expect
Speaker 2: someone to be thinking ahead while everyone else is reacting.
Speaker 2: Leadership does not get to opt out because the environment
Speaker 2: is polarized. And one of the hardest lessons COVID taught
Speaker 2: me was this, in a crisis, people do not care
Speaker 2: what you believe. They care what you do. They care
Speaker 2: if the plan makes sense, they care if the communication
Speaker 2: is clear. They care if you show up consistently. They
Speaker 2: care if you protect them. When the pressure is on,
Speaker 2: I watch leaders hide behind talking points. I watched others
Speaker 2: step forward and say here's what we know, here's what
Speaker 2: we don't, and here's what we're going to do next,
Speaker 2: and guess who people followed. Six years later, some leaders
Speaker 2: are still waiting for permission to lead. They're waiting for consensus,
Speaker 2: they're waiting for perfect information. They're waiting for politics to
Speaker 2: settle down. That's not leadership. That is delayed, disguised as caution.
Speaker 2: COVID also exposed something else we don't talk about enough.
Speaker 2: Preparedness is not a document, it's a mindset. You don't
Speaker 2: become calm in a crisis if you never practice clarity.
Speaker 2: You don't suddenly communicate well if you avoid hard conversations
Speaker 2: and normal times. You don't magically earn trust when pressure
Speaker 2: hits if you spent years burying it. Leadership debt always
Speaker 2: comes due in a crisis. And here's the part that
Speaker 2: makes some people uncomfortable. The next crisis may not look
Speaker 2: like a virus. It might be cyber. It might be infrastructure.
Speaker 2: It might be economic, it might be social, it might
Speaker 2: be something no one has even named yet. But the
Speaker 2: leadership test will be the same. Will you tell the
Speaker 2: truth early, even when it's incomplete. Will you protect people
Speaker 2: before you protect optics? Will you take responsibility without pointing fingers?
Speaker 2: Will you stay visible when it would be easier to disappear.
Speaker 2: COVID showed us who was prepared to lead without a script.
Speaker 2: It also showed us how quickly people forgive leaders who
Speaker 2: were honest, even when decisions are imperfect. What people don't
Speaker 2: forgive is silence, spin or cowardice. Six years later, the
Speaker 2: question is not what did we learn from COVID? The
Speaker 2: question has been asked to death. Honestly, the real question
Speaker 2: is what did you change? Did you build better systems,
Speaker 2: did you improve communication? Did you clarify decision authority? Did
Speaker 2: you train leaders to think under press sure? Did you
Speaker 2: personally get better at being uncomfortable in the spotlight? Or
Speaker 2: did you move on in hope lightning doesn't strike twice?
Speaker 2: So here's the leadership reality check. People will always rely
Speaker 2: on leadership to keep them safe, even when leadership itself
Speaker 2: is under attack, when the environment is divided, even when
Speaker 2: trust and institutions is shaky, even when every decision is
Speaker 2: criticized in real time. That responsibility does not disappear because
Speaker 2: it's inconvenient. So if COVID taught us anything worth carrying forward,
Speaker 2: it's this Leadership matters most when it costs you something,
Speaker 2: your comfort, your popularity, your certainty. Six years ago the
Speaker 2: world changed. Now what now? You decide whether you're the
Speaker 2: kind of leader people want standing there when the next
Speaker 2: moment hits. So I'll be honest, this was a hard
Speaker 2: one for me to record. I had to record it
Speaker 2: probably two or three times to make it through. Leadership
Speaker 2: is not about winning arguments. It's about protecting people. It's
Speaker 2: not about being right. It's about being ready, and it's
Speaker 2: not about the crisis that you survived. It's absolutely one
Speaker 2: thousand percent about how you show up for the next one.
Speaker 2: This has been the seven minute Leadership Podcast, and I
Speaker 2: thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: For more Paul Fell of Alito Podcasts, visit paulfellowalito dot com.